


Wives of the Stranger

by lurknomoar



Series: Bits and Pieces and Older Writings [9]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, Silent Sisters, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-01-31 19:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21451213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurknomoar/pseuds/lurknomoar
Summary: A few words on the Silent Sisters.
Series: Bits and Pieces and Older Writings [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1467382
Kudos: 7





	Wives of the Stranger

Consider the Silent Sisters: what do we know about them? They are an all-female order, tasked with caring for the dead, dedicated to the Stranger, deity of death and mystery. They have taken a vow of silence, and they tend to be covered up. They are symbolically married to the Stranger, they are the wives of death itself. But have we seen the order of the Silent Sisters from the inside? What do we  _really _ know about them?

Who ends up in the Silent Sisters? It makes sense that the order would take truly devout women who  _want_ to be there, and women who deal with their grief over the loss of a husband or child by turning to the Stranger. But maybe, just maybe, the Silent Sisters function as a female equivalent of the Night’s Watch. After all, they too are a celibate order of social outcasts, guarding the realm of men, standing between life and death. Which would mean that the Silent Sisters are a collection of the desperate and the unwanted, all the girls and women who had nowhere else to go. Petty thieves and adulterers, superfluous daughters of struggling families, suspected witches, disabled or deformed women shunned by their village, poor women with no better livelihood, they all have the choice to be safe and protected with the Sisters, at the price of their voice.

At the price of their voice? They have taken an oath of silence, but they are not an order of hermits, they are a serving order, they have work to do, and they work in the outside world, interacting with laymen, so I’m quite sure they need to communicate, to coordinate. There might be some literate sisters who can communicate with outsiders via written messages. But do they secretly talk amongst themselves when nobody is looking? I would say that their silence is genuine, but they have developed a sign language for internal use. Entering the order means taking the oath, and maybe the oath is the silence, maybe it ends with the words ‘and these are the last words I shall ever speak’. But becoming a fully-fledged member of the Sisters would include learning the sign language, and receiving a new name in it. (Novices are probably just called ‘novice’, or get a temporary name based on their chores, like Scrub, Fetch or Mend.)

It must be really tough to get used to, especially for the girls who didn’t choose to join of their own will. But a community like that, while severe and strict, must also be genuinely caring: they would not survive if they didn’t look after their own. They have stories, songs and lore in their sign language, they sit around the light of a single tallow candle as one of them talks and the others watch. Their prayers are also in their own language, a liturgy of handsigns, call and response. The Stranger visits all men, signs the matron. And none visit the stranger, respond the acolytes. None but us, they sign together.

Silent Sister are never really stated to be a stationary or a traveling order, so I would assume that they are both. Cities and larger towns can afford to keep a house full of Sisters to serve the townspeople. Small villages don’t have their own Sisters, instead groups of sisters travel around the countryside, going wherever they are needed, taking shelter in the local temples, or in the homes of the villagers. Of course being a city sister is an easier, cushier job, being a travelling sister is a much harder life. Harder, but maybe with more freedom.

I also wonder what the exact nature of the Silent Sisters’ work is. I know they have to care for the dead, wash and dress them I suppose, and do the appropriate rites. But if death is their dominion, and their dominion only, could they also serve as some sort of Medieval coroners, the holders of all traditional knowledge about death and what death is supposed to look like? (Of course this means that the order would also attract strange, inquisitive women, the women who would have become Maesters if women could be Maesters.) The Silent Sisters’ rituals might include making sure that the death in question was natural, and occurred the same way that it is said to have occurred. Maybe doing conducting quiet little investigations when necessary. I just really like the idea of a funeral procession interrupted by the Silent Sisters blocking the way and raising their arms to point out the killer in full sight of the grieving congregation and the Seven Gods.

I also really like the idea that the Silent Sisters’ tasks include making sure that a dead person is really dead, and dealing with ambiguous cases. They carry little mirrors to check for breath, and they have learned how to feel out the weakest of heartbeats. When somebody is not yet dead, they shake their heads and come back later. When somebody is no longer truly alive, but still cannot leave, it is the Sisters’ task to held them, to hand them over to the Stranger. And it works the other way round, too – there are stories about live babies cut out of dead mothers, long after the midwives gave up on both. There are even stories of a Silent Sister pressing on a seemingly dead man’s chest, lifting her veil to breathe life back into him – sometimes the Stranger is in a kind mood, sometimes he relents, when one of his own wives kisses him on the mouth.

If the Sisters habitually work with dead people, quite a lot of their ‘sacred rituals’ must boil down to cleaning and safety precautions. They must have the most knowledge about soap in all of the Seven Kingdoms: they scrub before and after they work, they boil their clothes all the time, and always bathe with two barrels of water, a steaming hot one and an ice cold one.

Entering the order of the Silent Sisters means giving up your voice, giving up your home, giving up your family, giving up your previous self, and that is a great sacrifice. But I can’t see the sisters working any other way than as a community that creates its own voice, finds new homes, and builds new families. Of course all sisters are family, but I’m sure some of them are handfasted and married according to their own rites. Some couples adopt younger novices, and older women take on an aunt-like role in helping out the younglings. Somehow, they make it work.


End file.
